Читать книгу The Idol of the Blind - Gallon Tom - Страница 6

The house must have been a very beautiful one at some time; it was filled even now with many beautiful articles of furniture, articles such as Comethup had never seen, and many of which he did not know the use of. But everything was in hopeless confusion and disorder; valuable articles broken and thrust aside, and something equally valuable put in its place to serve its purpose. Books lay about in every room of the house—some of them flung, with wide-open leaves, by impatient hands into corners; fine engravings were stood in their frames against the wall, because no one had ever troubled to hang them up; many of them had their glasses broken, and most of them were smothered in dust, or torn, or otherwise maltreated. Some stood in rolls in the corners of the rooms. It seemed, in every way, the house of a man who meant many things—even meant to live beautifully; but of a man who had never, in anything, got far beyond the mere fluttering resolutions.

But it was nevertheless a house of delights to the child—a place of never-ending wonder. Only, in the midst of their exploration, Comethup suddenly remembered that he had that afternoon made an appointment with Captain Garraway-Kyle, and that that appointment must be kept. There was a sort of tremor at his heart when he remembered how the captain would be standing, just within the door of his cottage, with his watch on his palm, waiting for him at the hour named. He informed Brian that he must really go.

The boy looked at him in astonishment; a shade of annoyance crossed his face. “Oh, put him off!” he said.

Comethup shook his head very decidedly; he was troubled, like the gentle little creature he was, at the thought that he would have to show any discourtesy to his cousin; but it was quite imperative that he should meet the captain, and the thing had to be managed somehow. “No, I couldn’t possibly do that. The captain and I are very great friends.”

Brian looked at the sober young face for a moment, and then burst into a roar of laughter. “But he’s so old!” he said, when he had recovered his gravity.

Comethup shook his head again, and smiled. “Not when you know him,” he replied. “Sometimes he seems almost as young as I am, only ever so much wiser.”

The other boy stared at him curiously. “Why, how old are you?” he asked.

“Seven next week,” replied Comethup.

“And I’m nine.” Giving the other time to digest his superiority, he presently added: “Must you really go and see this old chap? You can easily explain afterward.”

Comethup did not waver, but he decided to effect a compromise. “Why don’t you come too?” he said. “He would be very glad to see you.”

Brian looked a little ruefully round the untidy room in which they stood, and decided rapidly that it would be better to do that than to remain in the house alone. “Yes, I’ll come,” he said, and darted out into the hall for his cap.

Comethup ventured a suggestion. “Won’t you—won’t you ask your father?”

Brian laughed, and tossed Comethup’s cap to him. “Not I,” he cried. “Dad never knows where I am. All I have to do is to keep out of the way when I’m not wanted, and be right at his elbow when he thinks he’d like to see me. Come along.”

“We’ll have to run,” said Comethup. “We’re late.”

They arrived breathless at the captain’s cottage, and found the captain, as Comethup had expected, standing with his watch in his hand. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of a second visitor, and Comethup breathlessly explained the situation and tried to make a polite little speech, apologizing for having introduced a visitor without an invitation. But the captain interrupted him by saying stiffly that his cousin was very welcome, and the three set out for the usual walk together.

Somehow or other that afternoon the expedition was not quite a success. In the first place, Comethup and the captain were not quite at their ease; had, in fact, a ridiculous feeling of being on their best behaviour before a stranger. Then, too, the old innocent games—the building of forts, and the pleasant little make-believe world they had created—were things they did not care to venture upon before this boy, whose scornful laughter seemed to come so easily. They sat on a wooden seat on the top of the grass-grown wall of the town, and found themselves talking nicely, as Comethup would have put it, and being very stiff and unnatural and dull in consequence. The captain did not talk about his battles; was quite reserved, in fact, and difficult to lure into any expression of opinion. Comethup, proud of his old friend and of his old friend’s achievements, tried to draw him on to descriptions of happenings with which he himself was beautifully familiar, but which he felt would be interesting to Brian, and give that young gentleman a finer idea of the captain. But the captain was not to be drawn; seemed, indeed, purposely to forget things which had rattled glibly off his tongue but yesterday.

They saw Comethup safely to the gate of his father’s garden, and the captain gravely shook hands with him; knowing his mood, Comethup was positively afraid to salute, and, indeed, the stern eye of the captain forbade it. Brian’s road home lay for some distance in the same direction as the old man’s, and Comethup stood at the gate for some moments, watching them going on together. But the captain walked on one side of the pavement and Brian swung along on the other, as far apart as possible, and they did not appear to have anything to say to each other.

After that, Brian Carlaw entered somewhat largely into Comethup’s existence, to the exclusion, at times, of the captain. Comethup meant no disloyalty to his first friend, and went to bed many a night troubled at the thought that there was a breach growing between them; but Brian, child though he was, had a fine air of appropriating Comethup and planning excursions with him, and arranging boyish expeditions from which the younger child found it difficult to escape. He would dash in, in the morning, with his eyes sparkling and his gay laugh waking up the house, and drag Comethup off, waving aside every remonstrance, and refusing to wait an instant for anything. He had a splendid, reckless fashion, so Comethup thought, of scorning mere ordinary doors and paths, such as were used by mere ordinary boys, and of leaping and rushing across flower-beds or turf, and climbing in at a window, in a most unexpected and daring way. One never knew quite where to have him, or what to expect of him; one never knew quite in what mood he would appear. And each mood was something different from the last, and, whether grave or gay, wholly captivating. If he came with some childish tale of tribulation on his lips, it was a tribulation apparently so great and so real that all one’s heart went out to him and one could not do enough to show how deep was one’s sympathy; at least that was what Comethup felt. If he dashed in, with laughter on his lips and devilry in his eyes, the thing was so infectious, so maddening, that even grave little Comethup was bitten by it and felt the devil leaping in his veins as well, and was ready for anything.

When it happened that the captain and Comethup met at all, they met, curiously enough, although neither confessed it to the other, by stealth. Brian monopolized the younger boy so much that there were no more arranged meetings, unless the one met the other by accident a day before, and was able to suggest that a meeting should be held. On most occasions, if Brian had not appeared by a certain hour, Comethup would steal off to the captain’s cottage. Never a word would be said, but each fully and completely understood the situation; and the captain welcomed Comethup, and Comethup received the welcome, with as much grave courtesy as though they had been in the habit of meeting daily, and there were no outside circumstances in their simple lives to separate them. It was clearly understood on either hand that Brian was elsewhere, or had failed to keep some engagement he had made; and the captain very happily, and Comethup very happily too, but feeling a little bit like a traitor to both sides, would start off, hand in hand, to enjoy one of the old days.

Yet, even on those occasions, so great was the influence of the other boy upon them that they would keep a wary eye open—still without a word to each other—for his possible appearance on the scene. The building of the forts was not the splendid, sole-absorbing thing it used to be, because they did it stealthily. Some one else had entered into their paradise, and had turned the fruit of it a little sour. Comethup tried hard, on those occasions, to be very, very good to the captain; and the captain, for his part, tried hard to appear as though there could be nothing different between them, and as though these stolen days were just as nice and just as spontaneous as the former days had been. But things were different, somehow; their world went differently, and was not the world they had known before. Comethup found his mind wandering, even during the recital of a thrilling battle episode, to that boy with the splendid eyes and the charming manner, and found himself wondering what the boy was doing, and if he carried little Comethup in his mind.

The expeditions with Brian were not of the innocent and sober character which marked those with Captain Garraway-Kyle; Brian was the leader, and was ready at all times for something new; the very soul of the boy seemed to cry out for that; a new discovery, fascinating to-day, was old and tiresome to-morrow; the day was a hopeless and fretful one that saw nothing new or fantastic accomplished. His enterprise knew no bounds, and fear, in the ordinary mortal sense, was not in him. The captain’s expeditions had been wonderful, and each had furnished a new delight for Comethup; but they paled into insignificance beside the inventions of Brian.

David Willis was a man of many dreamy occupations, a man who never hurried, and whose life may be said to have been filled with odds and ends of employment. So it happened that Comethup came and went as he would, and his father saw but little of him; he knew that the child was happy, and he heard his voice frequently about the house. But beyond that he cared nothing; he was simply content to know that the child was there, and that all was well with him. Thus Comethup had plenty of scope for his adventures, and plenty of time for any expedition that might present itself.

There was an old and half-ruined house which stood on the extreme outskirts of the town and was surrounded by an old, dark, neglected wilderness of a garden. The two children had peeped in through the rusty iron gates occasionally, with their small faces pressed close between the bars, and had speculated upon what the garden contained and who lived in the house. Brian stoutly asserted that the house was empty, and then that it was haunted; he had probably heard his father or the servants say that. It remained, and had remained for some time, the one possible place which they had not explored; Brian would not have confessed it for the world, but he had a deadly fear of it, probably the only fear he knew concerning anything at that time. It frightened him, even while it fascinated him; he would choose that way to walk, even when it meant that to pass the house they would have to go a long way out of the direction they had arranged.

At last one day he came in, with his eyes curiously bright, and announced his intention of exploring the place. They would get in somehow, he said—through a window if necessary. Comethup was doubtful, but Brian’s stronger will conquered, as usual, and they set off. Near the place, however, the elder boy hesitated, and drew back a little.

“I don’t think we’ll go,” he said. “There won’t be any fun in it.” And he began to walk away.

Comethup felt relieved; he had not liked the expedition from the first. He said nothing, but set out to follow Brian.

But Brian chafed under a sense of degradation all day. He watched Comethup sharply, to be sure that the younger boy was not actually laughing at him; saw scorn in his eyes, when there was no scorn in Comethup’s heart. They had parted for their midday meal, and had been out again in the afternoon, still under that sense of constraint, and Comethup was diligently studying the pictures in an old book alone in the parlour of his father’s house, when Brian came leaping across the flower-beds and cried to him from outside the window:

“Come along; don’t wait for anything. I’m going to that house.”

Comethup knew perfectly well which house was meant, but he affected ignorance, and said weakly, “Which house?”

“Oh, you know; the haunted one; the one we didn’t go to to-day. Come along.”

Comethup closed the book, but kept a finger between the leaves. “It’s very late,” he urged, “and it’ll soon be getting dark.”

Brian stood with his hands on the window sill, impatiently kicking at the house wall. “You’re afraid,” he said, looking up at Comethup.

Comethup shook his head, but his drawn brows showed anxiety. “No, I’m not afraid,” he said, slowly. “But I’d rather wait until to-morrow, if you want to see the house.”

“No one ever goes to a house that’s haunted in the daytime,” said Brian. “I’m going now.”

“It’s nicer in the daytime,” urged Comethup, getting one leg down from the window seat and dangling it irresolutely. “But I’ll come if you like.”

“Come along then,” cried the other. “You’re so slow; you can’t make up your mind quickly, as I do.”

Comethup knew that the reproach was justified, and felt humbled accordingly. He was not altogether so happy in this adventure as he had been in all those which had preceded it. In the first place, he had to steal out of the house into the mysterious summer evening, being careful that no one saw him. His father was in church practising; he could hear the slow droning of the organ, like the hum of a gigantic tired insect going to sleep with the rest of the world. Comethup wished that he had gone into the church with his father, and sat there, out of the way of temptation such as this.

The evening was warm and heavy, and a hundred sweet odours came from the gardens which fringed the road. Brian talked valiantly and loudly as they went along of how foolish it was to be afraid of anything, just because it happened to be dark, and of a hundred other matters tending to keep up his ebbing courage. Comethup was silent, doggedly determined to go through with the business, now that he had embarked upon it, and with a plaintive hope in his heart that it might not be so dreadful, after all.

Curiously enough, that part of the outskirts of the town in which the house lay seemed always to be darker and more sombre-looking than any other. All the houses about there were very old, with high walls and tall, rustling old trees; with paths in their gardens which seemed always full of dead leaves and weeds at all times of the year. And that particular house was the most sombre and dismal-looking of them all. It had originally been a very fine house; there were the remains of carvings on the stone pillars which supported the gates. But everything was in decay; one of the great gates hung merely by one hinge, and swayed perilously when it was touched; the other stood permanently ajar.

Their young hearts were beating very heavily when they reached the gates. A wind had risen, and was coming from the distant sea across the flat marshland; it stirred the trees and bent their long limbs, so that they seemed to point down at the two small, trembling figures, and to ask who they were, and to plot and whisper against them. Comethup and Brian gripped hands tightly as they slipped through the aperture between the gates. The wind seemed specially to haunt that place; it sent a dusty, whirling eddy of last year’s leaves charging at them and fluttering about them as they went hesitatingly up the long drive. Brian stopped halfway to the house and pushed his cap back on his clustering hair with well-assumed carelessness, and said: “There’s nothing to be seen; I don’t think we’ll go any farther. Besides, we ought to be home.”

Comethup kept steadily on up the drive. “I’m going up to the house,” he said.

There was nothing left for Brian but to follow him, which he did, keeping a wary eye behind him. They gained confidence as they went on, and even raised their voices a little above the whisper in which they had spoken previously. They ploughed their way through the neglected grounds where the paths were scarcely to be distinguished for the mass of tangled weeds which overgrew them, and came up to the house. Not a light showed anywhere; the windows were all shuttered, and the doors apparently fastened.

“I don’t believe any one lives here,” said Brian, sinking his voice again to a whisper. “But I don’t think we’ll go in to-night; we’ve seen a good deal, haven’t we?”

Comethup evidently thought that he had done sufficient to clear him from that accusation of cowardice; but, for the keeping up of appearances, he spoke with apparent reluctance: “Oh, if you like; perhaps we had better go home.”

The house behind them, standing up gray and stark and sombre in the twilight, was a far more terrible thing than it had been when they faced it. By common consent they hurried a little as they trotted along among the dead leaves. The wind, too, was at their back now, and flung fluttering things about their legs and against their ears; they were afraid to look round, and yet afraid to go on without glancing behind them. Halfway down the drive, too, they heard a rustling among the trees, a louder rustling than that caused by the wind. Brian stopped still, and Comethup wondered why his heart kept jumping up into his throat and nearly choking him. Then, from among the shadows of the trees, came a little figure all in white—a figure smaller even than Comethup, but very terrible coming in that fashion, and in that hour and in that place. At any other time they might have said it was a little child, a girl; but now their nerves were too unstrung for practical things. There could be no mistake about its identity. With a sort of simultaneous gasp they set off at headlong speed down the drive, straight for the gate.

And the figure came running after them, crying something piteously to them. But that was worse than anything else; they almost tumbled over each other in their eagerness to get out through the gates; in fact, they never stopped running till they were far down the road, and breathless. Then Brian leaned against a wall and surveyed Comethup with horror-struck eyes. “It was the ghost!” he said; “and it ran after us!”

“Yes,” said Comethup, slowly, and a little doubtfully, “it was the ghost.”

“And it was pretty big, too,” said Brian, fanning himself with his cap. “They don’t look so large in the dark.”

Comethup lay awake a long time that night in his little room under the roof. He was not frightened; he was quite calm as he looked out through the uncurtained window at the blinking stars. He seemed to set everything else aside, and to hear only the piteous, pleading voice crying to him in the garden; he was quite sorry now that he had run away; and very, very sorry, in his childish mind, for the ghost.

“It was a very little ghost,” he murmured to himself as he fell asleep.